He was no athlete but was tanned, slim and healthy, walked regularly. I do wonder if excessive athleticism can be a problem, maybe increasing the number of total heartbeats through constant strain, wearing out the heart early and overwhelming the benefits of exercise to the heart. Perhaps moderation is the key (that and getting lucky with the genes ofc ;) ).
this is a common meme [1]
[1] https://www.discovery.com/nature/almost-every-mammal-gets-ab...
https://allthatsinteresting.com/blue-zones-supercentenarians
The author claimed that once you corrected for this, the blue zones pretty much all disappeared.
Edit: found it [1]
[1] https://fortune.com/europe/2024/12/14/are-blue-zones-myth-ex...
https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/news/2024/sep/ucl-demographers-wor...
“Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud”
>For example, despite vegetables and sweet potatoes being promoted as key components of the Okinawan ‘Blue Zone’ diets, according to the Japanese government, Okinawans eat the least vegetables and sweet potatoes in Japan and have the highest body mass index.
What a dishonest argument:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okinawa_diet
>Specifically, the Okinawans circa 1950 ate sweet potatoes for 849 grams of the total 1262 grams of food that they consumed, which constituted 69% of their total daily calories.[2]
>The traditional Okinawan diet as described above was widely practiced on the islands until about the 1960s.[2] Since then, dietary practices shifted towards Western and mainland Japanese patterns, with fat intake rising from about 6% to 27% of total caloric intake and the sweet potato being supplanted with rice and bread.[8]
>Okinawans ate three grams total of meat – including pork and poultry – per day, substantially less than the 11-gram average of Japanese as a whole in 1950.[2] The pig's feet, ears, and stomach were considered as everyday foodstuffs.[1] In 1979 after many years of Westernization, the quantity of pork consumption per person a year in Okinawa was 7.9 kg (17 lb), exceeding by about 50% that of the Japanese national average.[9]
>Since the early 2000s, the difference in life expectancy between Okinawan and mainland Japanese decreased, possibly due to Westernization and erosion of the traditional diet.[3][4] The spread of primarily American fast-food chains was linked with an increase in cardiovascular diseases, much like the ones noted in Japanese migrants to the United States.[3][4]
After consulting several experts, The Washington Post wrote that "statistically improbable is not the same thing as statistically impossible", that Novoselov and Zak's claims have been dismissed by the overwhelming majority of experts, and that those claims are "lacking, if not outright deficient". (the entire section is worth reading) [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#Controversy_reg...
She was almost certainly a fraud, but the Wikipedia mob doesn't want her debunked.
De-debunking? Bunking?
But it also seems like there's a tendency for debunkers to be too categorical. It should be kept in mind that anyone aged around 110 would have gone through a variety of age and other record systems. Moreover, it's quite possible exercise and special diet as such really really aren't that useful.